Roger Federer’s Serve

Federer’s serve: less extreme and a better model. So far on Tennisplayer we have taken a detailed look at the motions of two of the greatest servers in the modern: Pete Sampras (Click Here) and Andy Roddick. (Click Here) Now in the next two articles we’ll analyze the motion of another top player, a player with one of the most underrated serves in the game: Roger Federer. Federer is a great model for most players at most levels, much better in many respects than either Sampras or Roddick. In these articles we are going to use his motion to identify all the basic elements that go into building a high level technical service motion, a motion that will allow players to get the most out of their ability on a consistent basis. In our analysis of Pete and Andy we identified certain basic positions in their motions that are shared by all good servers. But other components, the ones that make their motions particularly distinctive, are more problematic for many if not most players to model. For Sampras these include his starting stance, his body rotation, and the extreme left ball position on his toss–all omponents that contribute to his…